A Couple of Recipes

After a discussion that came up in my blog comments, I decided to try making mayonnaise again. I find it to be very easy, but I haven’t really liked the results in the past, and the recipes always make a lot of mayonnaise. The other recipe, the salad dressing, I’ve been using a lot lately. I love it.

I make both of these with an immersion blender (Cuisinart Smart Stick). I’ve had it for a long time, but I didn’t start using it all the time until I stumbled across the plastic measuring/mixing beaker recently. Not having to find something to mix in is nice, and the measuring markings on the thing also allow me to not dirty up an additional measuring cup.

Here’s the first recipe, Mustardy Mayonnaise:

1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1/2 cup Extra Light Olive Oil
1/4 cup White Wine Vinegar
1 T Gulden’s Spicy Brown Mustard
1/2 t. sea salt (or to taste)
1 egg

Blend vinegar, egg, mustard and salt until thoroughly mixed. With immersion blender running, add olive oils in a thin stream until completely blended.

It took longer to assemble the ingredients than to mix the mayonnaise. I think it could have used either more acid or more salt, I’m not sure which. If you’d prefer, Dijon mustard is also good in there. This mustard is mostly for making meat/fish salad mixtures or adding to a vinaigrette to improve the emulsification process.

The second recipe is for a Green Goddess Dressing. I started with a recipe from a raw foods cookbook, made some changes, and wound up with something more like a Guacamole Dressing. It’s fantastic on greens with grilled chicken or steak.

So here it is, Guacamole Green Goddess Dressing:

1/4 cup water
1/2 ripe California avocado
1/2 t. sea salt
juice of half a lime (you can use lemon if that’s all you’ve got, but lime is better)
2-3 T. chopped onion
1 minced garlic clove
1/4 t. cumin
1/2 t. chili powder

I also added a squirt of Sriracha sauce, but it is pretty spicy already.

Put everything in the beaker for the immersion blender except the avocado. Thoroughly blend up the chopped onion and garlic and everything else. Add the avocado and blend until smooth. This will dress two Big Ass Salads generously.